jumpingfish

I saw a man yesterday running with his dog. He wasn’t very fast, and his little black dog was stopping at various trees and shrubs to investigate. And I watched as a loose dog came trotting out of nowhere from across the street and started to pick a fight with the man’s little black dog.

I don’t recall which dog made the first move, but in a moment they were snarling ferociously and at each other. The man tried in vain to say between them, pulling on his little dog’s leash, trying to yank him out of the action. And then the little dog slipped out of his collar and both dogs were loose.

The second dog was bigger and had the advantage, but the first one was wiggly and turned on a dime. The big dog tried to bite the little one on the back, but the little one tucked and turned and ran. He ran out into the street where the traffic had slowed because of the commotion and now came to a halt as the two dogs went at it right on the dotted line.

The man saw that the cars had stopped and ran into the street, trying to get between the fighting dogs and whip the bigger one with his leash. And then the little black dog, deciding that there was no profit in all this, made an escape, dashing for the sidewalk, leaving the big dog in the middle of the road staring at the man.

The big dog began to snarl. The man stepped toward the dog and yelled, “Go,” pointing back to the house across the street.

“GO!” he yelled even louder pointing again back to the house.

The big dog looked at the man. The snarl was gone from its face.

“GOOO!” the man yelled again, this time at the top of his lungs, sounding like some wild man of the mountains.

The big dog turned and walked away.

“Thank you,” the man said to a woman in an SUV who was at the front of the line of cars stopped in the street.

He scooped up his little black dog and walked off in the direction the two of them had been running, whispering something in the little black dog’s ear.

1. What Does He Think He’s Doing?

We were eating breakfast tacos at Torchy’s, sitting outside in the sun watching people come and go, watching the traffic, watching the joggers running on the Arbor Trails trail.

I was really enjoying my bacon, egg & cheese, captivated by the taste, by the protein coursing thru my veins lifting the veil of grim that floats about me in the morning.

My brother pointed at a guy running by.

“What does he think he’s doing?” he said. “He’s not jogging. You could walk faster than that.”

I looked up and thought that I couldn’t walk faster than that, or at least wouldn’t. And I thought that at least that guy’s out there trying.

2. You’ve Been Running All This Time?

That was a little more than a year ago. Soon after my brother’s visit, I started walking short distances and then walking longer distances and then jogging, although truth be told my jogging is more like trudging, but … whatever. I am finally out there again.

In the afternoons, I’ll push the keyboard back and put on my running gear and take the dog out for a jog around Arbor Trails. Today I did 3.5 miles.  And as if the jogging isn’t slow enough, the dog and I make a point to take regular walking breaks.

These walking breaks are, frankly, key. Guinness likes the chance to do some sniffing around. I like the chance to … stop jogging. It’s a little reward for getting out there.

So on our way home today, down the final stretch in fact, up the slight grade that seems to be such a drag at the end of the run, I passed a guy whom I had passed on the way out. He looked at me and smiled.

“You’ve been running all this time?” he asked. “I saw you going out, and that was a long time ago.”

He was all impressed by how long I’d been at it. He didn’t know anything about the walking breaks. Or about the trudging. And let’s just say that I let it stay that way.

It was Friday. It was evening. The week was done.

We were sitting outside on the patio at Austin Java sipping iced teas. The dog was alternately drinking from a bowl of water, sitting on the wall behind us watching the traffic on Barton Springs Boulevard, and contentedly lying in my lap.

A group of guys was sitting at a table not far from us, pointing across the street at Flipnotics and watching the cars as they drove by. A college girl was working on a research paper just across from us. Her boyfriend had given up and left a few minutes after we arrived, but she was still at it, reading papers on her laptop, sipping her tea, listening to music on her iPod. A grandmother who had just arrived was desperately trying to scrub clean the patio chairs and table before her grandson sat down.

Our food arrived.

Trudy had pasta. I had a chicken satay sandwich and mashers. The iced tea tasted really, really good. And then Gladys Knight and the Pips came on singing Midnight Train. I took a bite of my sandwich and looked over at Trudy with tears in my eyes.

She smiled.

You know, the news is so bad today. The horrible stories kicked off the front page of BBC are superseded by ones even worse. I can’t bring myself to talk about them. But…

Friday. Iced tea. Cool breeze. Good food. A content dog. And Gladys Knight.

A small, welcome miracle.

Years ago I worked on a team with a guy who lived somewhere in North Texas. The company was a big supporter of telecommuting, and he worked from home. Periodically he would come down to see us face-to-face, but most of the time he dialed in remotely. In the spring you could hear the Mockingbirds in his yard and sometimes his dog. That was just part of the company culture. People worked from home and were sometimes interrupted by chirping or barking or sometimes whining kids.

Today I work at a different company, and I’m the telecommuter. The kid is at college, but there are Mockingbirds and Cardinals and Lesser Goldfinches and two kinds of Wren and (alas) squawking Grackles. And you probably know that there’s a dog.

Most of the day he just sleeps. Guinness is a dog, after all: they sleep. But in the afternoons when dinner time approaches (approach being defined as two hours away), he’ll come in here all wag-tailed and ready-to-go, and if I’m not careful (on the phone) a bark will come at the wrong time.

In this job, at this company, virtually no one telecommutes. My coworkers all think it hilarious when Guinness barks. It doesn’t make much difference what’s being said, when he barks in the middle of a conversation, there’s almost always some way to imagine him offering commentary.

And so they laugh. Every time they laugh. And I wonder if my reputation suffers.

Sometimes I cloister myself in here with the door closed and the electronics driving up the temperature, giving Guinness free reign of the house and the backyard.  But most of the time I just don’t worry about it. My reputation is as I do not as my dogs says, and I figure if he barks, well then … it is what it is.

Besides, there are the birds singing outside the patio door on the first day of spring. No amount of laughter can take that away.

The full moon rides across a cloudless sky, closer and bigger and brighter than it has been for 20 years, casting shadows of budding branches on the ground.

The wind blows thru the branches, shaking the shadows, making the wind chimes chime.

Maybe someday it will rain.